By: W2W Ventures Staff

Before you leave work:

Industry Information

• Transfer industry newsletters, alerts and daily/weekly/monthly digests from your professional email to your personal email address.
• If you do not currently receive such newsletters, canvas colleagues to find the best organization newsletters and email updates to keep yourself wise in your industry.
• If you receive paper non-subscription fee newsletters from associations, consider requesting the mailing organization include your home address in their mailing list (do not leave your employer or replacement high and dry – get on the mailing list, don’t transfer the only copy to your home).

Personal Profile

• Update your resume with your current job.
• Include key accomplishments, backed up with tangible statistics (you will forget these, so do your best to carve out some time to make some notes now).
• Record on a separate document, accomplishments beyond those recorded on your resume. Examples of notes include internal awards, positive client relationships, co-workers perceptions of you, and positive comments from annual reviews. This document will be invaluable for years down the road when you are able to recall quotes and statistics during an interview.
• Email yourself key documents that you authored and or related to projects in which you took part (make sure you understand your firm or company’s proprietary document policy before taking documents that you may use to showcase your work style)

Professional Networking

• Make sure your personal Rolodex is populated with your professional contacts. It seems like you will never forget some of the phone numbers and email addresses you have committed to memory now, but time fades memories and those valuable contacts should not be lost.
• If your employer has an alumni program take advantage of the benefits. You may have the opportunity to stay in touch with colleagues through the firms formalized program.
  • There is often contact information for other alumni with whom you can develop a monthly or quarterly networking breakfast or lunch.
  • If your employer does not have an alumni program, volunteer to help beta test a program! The more engaged you are during your exit, the better their memory of you will be.

Take Advantage of Your Exit Interview

• Using your best judgment about your firm’s culture and with the adage in mind, “don’t burn bridges,” be honest and fair. Your employer is looking for quality feedback. The person conducting the interview will have specific questions they want answered. Respect what they are looking for - achievable goals for the firm, not grand sweeping change.
• Use the exit interview to see where the firm or company is using contract labor or project based employees with your expertise. If you work in a large corporation you probably do not know the breadth in which contract labor is used. If you are interested in keeping your foot in the door through part time or project work, open the discussion to these opportunities. Do not expect an offer of work in the meeting. Ask what is the appropriate way to pursue these opportunities.
• If your firm does not have a formal exit interview program, schedule time with the department heads with which you had direct contact.